“Reductio ad absurdum” is the Latin phrase for establishing a claim by arguing that the counterclaim would lead to an absurdity. It is an entirely valid way of proving a point.
It is why, for example, freedom of speech, even enshrined as it is in the US Constitution, has limits. Were it limitless, it could, to paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in a 1919 opinion, allow a person to falsely shout “fire!” in a crowded theater, possibly causing a stampede and harm to others. Speech that could incite imminent violence is similarly limited by US law, as is speech advocating the violent overthrow of the government.
Although it lacks a constitution, Israel embraces the concept of freedom of speech. In fact, overheated political rhetoric is a regular feature of Israeli society, even (perhaps especially) in the Knesset. But, no less than in the US, there are limits in Israel on speech.
The validity—indeed, necessity—of such limits seem to have eluded some Israeli intellectuals and media commentators around the world, as evidenced in the uproar that ensued over a police raid on an Arab bookstore in Yerushalayim.
On Sunday, February 9, police entered two branches of a store called the Educational Bookshop, confiscated dozens of books and arrested two members of the family that owns the business.
Novelist David Grossman called the arrests “outrageous.”
Writer Nathan Thrall bemoaned what he characterized as the police’s “total impunity” for arresting “two of the most well-connected Palestinians in East Jerusalem” (the latter phrase referring to the part of Yerushalayim most of whose residents are Arabs).
“This is not how responsible democracies behave,” fumed Yona Shem-Tov, CEO of an organization called Encounter. “It is how belligerent, regressive societies operate.”
The rights group B’Tselem called the raid and arrests an “attempt to crush the Palestinian people” and demanded that Israel must “stop persecuting Palestinian intellectuals.”
Another Israeli group, Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said the police action was “another step in efforts to intimidate and silence Palestinians by the Israeli authorities.”
Here in the US, writer and Reform clergyman Jeffrey Salkin lambasted the raid, righteously reminding his readers of the fact that Nazi sympathizers burned “subversive” books in Berlin in 1933.
Yet, all the expressions of outrage were launched without any of the launchers knowing what brought about the raid or very much about the content of the seized material.
Only that, as a policeman apparently showed a reporter, one of the items taken was a children’s coloring book titled, “From the Jordan to the Sea.”
Rivers and seas, to be sure, are wonderful subjects for a children’s book. But, just as sure, the phrase “from the river to the sea,” in contemporary context, means, in effect: “Israel should cease to exist and be replaced with a 23rd Arab state, many of whose residents harbor murderous hatred for Jews.”
A lovely message to plant in the fertile minds of curious crayon-holders.
Israeli detectives explained that they “encountered numerous books containing inciteful material with nationalist Palestinian themes.”
Should such material be permitted to be sold in Israel? To an unbridled free speech advocate, the answer is “of course!”
But any even-keeled Israeli citizen would contend the opposite.
And said citizen might well borrow from the above-mentioned Jeffery Salkin’s cri de coeur and invoke the 1930s.
Before the start of World War II, the US Congress passed what came to be called the Smith Act. It prohibited advocating or teaching the “propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence.”
Two decades earlier, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: “When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in times of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.”
The bemoaners of the bookstore raid might need to be reminded that Israel is at war, with multiple enemies seeking to murder its citizens and replace its government.
And reminded, too, that speech inciting people or inspiring youngsters to embrace the goals of the country’s mortal enemies is not protected speech—not by law, nor by custom, nor by reason.
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